Hexegesis and Sexist Jesus?

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Dan McClellan (1:01)

Again, as long as you're doing it for God and you're authorized to do it, it seems like...

Dan Beecher (1:09)

And you've got a penis.

Dan McClellan (1:10)

Yes, right. That's very important.

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:20)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:21)

And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And things are getting spooky, I understand, Daniel.

Dan Beecher (1:36)

It's the most spookiest time of the year.

Yeah, it's spooky times. And so we decided to dive head first into the spookiness. So our first thing of the day is gonna be a new category that we've never used before. It's gonna be a Hexegesis.

Dan McClellan (2:00)

Yeah, get used to hearing that one.

Dan Beecher (2:03)

Yeah, I don't know that we'll ever use it again, but maybe we will. But we're gonna be talking about witches.

And that is fun, spooky times. You know, this whole episode is kind of about the mistreatment of women on some levels.

Dan McClellan (2:21)

Mostly about that.

Dan Beecher (2:23)

Yeah, so we'll just lean hard into that, because our next segment, our second segment, is going to be a taking issue, where we're going to be talking about Jesus and his treatment of non-Israelite women. It's a compare and contrast. It's an inter-, it's fascinating. And I had not really exposed myself to these stories. And so we'll have a lot to go over. That's a really, it's a really interesting conversation. Yeah. But first, let's put on your pointy hats and let's dive into Hexegesis.

So, witches, Dan, it's a, they're spooky, we're all terrified of them.

Dan McClellan (3:21)

They're absolutely kooky and all the other things.

Dan Beecher (3:24)

Serious and kooky. Yeah.

Dan McClellan (3:27)

And what I hear all the time on social media, tell me if you ever heard this, somebody says that King James changed the Bible to, because of how much he hated witches.

Dan Beecher (3:40)

I have heard, I mean, here's the thing, I come from a theater background, so I have heard a lot of sort of relating King James to witches, in part because we know that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth right when James ascended the throne. And it said that it was to appeal to King James, who was Scottish.

SPEAKER_4 (4:09)

Right.

Dan Beecher (4:10)

And it heavily features witches. So I know, so like, I can see that there has been a James and witch thing.

SPEAKER_4 (4:19)

Yeah.

Dan Beecher (4:20)

So, but talk to me about Witchcraft, the Bible and King James.

Dan McClellan (4:27)

So King James famously was quite anti-witch and anti-women in certain ways, inside and outside the bedroom.

Dan Beecher (4:36)

I was going to say, there's one way that we're all specifically thinking of.

Dan McClellan (4:41)

But there's a claim that he added a verse to the Book of Exodus.

The claim is that Exodus 22, 18 is added by King James, which reads, and oh, I don't even have the King James version up, but the King James version says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Correct. And so I've seen this claim many times on social media. And it's just entirely false. It's entirely made up because the verse actually didn't change at all from the source text. Because the King James version is a very conservative revision of a translation that already existed, specifically the Bishops Bible. And you can go back to the Bishops Bible, you can go back to the Geneva Bible, you can go back to the Great Bible, you can go back to the Matthews Bible, you can go all the way back to Tyndale, who did translate Exodus into English. And it all says, more or less, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. So that is in keeping with the longstanding tradition of misogyny that we have in Bible translation, that still goes on down to this very day. But it is-